for the birds

My twenty tulsi plants are HUGE!  The plants are so strong they can support small birds.  But they are so overgrown and sorely neglected since I was gone for three months.  I have not had time to harvest them much, even since we have been back.  They thrive in the weather conditions where we live.   They are almost as tall as me and need to be shaped. 

I refuse to prune them and just throw out the precious branches.  Each leaf is medicine.  In the last couple of years I have harvested them and plucked the leaves off by hand.  Then I dry the leaves and ship them to California where they are packaged for tulsi tea.  The tea is sold, it helps so many people.  And the money earned is given to charitable causes.  So it is a multi-level seva.

I love the quiet, meditative work of harvesting, but I am so busy these days that I have little time for it.  Still I persevere, bit by bit.

In the meantime, the birds are loving the seeds, and the bees love the flowers.  Just today I heard an unusual sound at my window and when I opened the shade, I kid you not, a bird was tapping his beak on the window, as if to say thank you.